Service jobs taught me everything

This essay is an edited version of a piece I originally shared on Not Bad in July 2025

The Italian singer-songwriter Motta wrote a song a while ago. It's here on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube if you’d like listen to it. It goes:

La fine dei vent'anni / è un po' come essere in ritardo

The end of your twenties is a bit like being late—he sings.

Non devi sbagliare strada/ non farti del male/ e trovare parcheggio

You can't take the wrong road, you can't hurt yourself, and you must find somewhere to park.

I turned thirty earlier this year. Leading up to the birthday, I was both proud of where my twenties took me, exhausted by their chaos, and regretful of the fact that I should have figured out more of life by then. No one's hyped for turning 30 like they are for 20. Twenty marks the start of an adventure, and 30 sort of marks the end of one?

Lucky or not, over the last decade I accumulated enough stories to fill a feature-length documentary. I made a lot of quick decisions and lived through some pretty absurd experiences. Which is perhaps why, around the same time I was sending people's invites to come to the pub with me for a celebratory drink, I was also feeling strangely unsettled. The plane is about to take off, I thought to myself, but I'm anchored down by memories of all that's been.

Many of those memories seemed to relate to the jobs I had, how those jobs influenced the person I am today, and whether or not I'd actually learned anything useful from those ten years.

What should I take with me into the next chapter?

The jobs that taught me the most, in retrospective, weren't the reasonably-paid joint head of something roles with too many meetings. They were the minimum wage positions I took on leading up to and shortly after university. I worked in cafés, restaurants, gift shops, fast-food chains, receptions, food trucks and apothecaries, where I'd often be face-to-face with customers, running around like crazy, and working side by side with a handful of hardworking folks. I hope to one day write about each one, but for the moment a summary of sorts will do. Perhaps, one focused on lessons rather than duties. Shall we?

In the spirit of figuring out what has been valuable, here are four lessons I've learned from working minimum-wage jobs in the service industry.

1. Plurality of voices leads to better work

The teams who push through challenges and those where people seem the most fulfilled are the ones where there's a "good" mix of people. It's a simplistic statement, but it's fundamentally true in my experience. This correlation between plurality of voices and work that doesn’t suck was most evident in some of the restaurants I worked at.

Armed with acceptable knowledge of English and the ability to bread chicken and peel onions, I got a job at a "gourmet" burger restaurant in south west London at 19. I was only a kitchen porter but it felt like a dream come true, to have actual people with Chef-fy titles rely on you for quite literally everything. In this job, I worked with a talented and well-balanced team of fun, creative and dedicated people. You could hear two or three different languages being spoken around the restaurant at any time. My boss was into marine biology. One of the waitresses was training to be a flight attendant (and she ended up with BA not long after I left). Service was smooth even though people had very different ways of working, and yes, we’d have problems, but they would get fixed. It was that same team that made my 10-hour shifts feel more like 6. I'm not sure exactly how or why it all clicked, but I can say with certainty that the amalgamation of cultures, interests and skills played a big part in helping us problem solve and connect. No surprise, it was one of the best jobs of my twenties.

2. Always under promise and... deliver exactly what you promised

Managing expectations is a much harder skill than we are willing to admit. It's something I learned at work, but I've found that it applies to every relationship. It's better to tell your Chef that you've never baked banana bread before and that you need some help—even thought it might seem embarrassing given how simple banana bread is to make—than to promise that they'll get a tasty cake and then deliver a dense, sunk-in-the-middle disappointment.

Instead, you promise a comfortable level and you deliver on that comfortable level. This is true even in situations where you need guidance to get comfortable.

When I started approaching expectations with this lens, I started earning more respect, and I could stop feeling so tense all the time. And I think you'll find that, when you under promise, there is no need to overdeliver either—despite what some may tell you. If you attempt to overdeliver, you risk maxing out and people will expect even more next time.

Had I learned this lesson years ago, I’d have saved myself an awful lot of guilt and embarrassment, and even today, as a chronic exaggerator slash ambitious collaborator, I have to triple check what promises I make all the time.

3. CVs aren’t good metrics for success in the workplace

The things that a person has achieved so far, the people they associated with, and their long-term career goals are the three most important differentiators in modern recruitment. Such criteria, whether explicitly stated by the candidate or assumed by whoever’s hiring, are used to discriminate against, ahem, "select the best" candidates. It happens in more occasions than we'd like to confess, which is to say, it happens regardless of one's readiness to work, transferable skills, and team-fit.

What jobs in the service industry have taught me is something totally different. What should matter is how willing you are to put in the work, how well you can learn new skills, and how seriously you take the basics (things like showing up on time, respecting your colleagues, or asking for help when you need it). Hardly surprising a lesson, I'm aware. But then again, I did learn it.

It's a concrete caution I carry into work to this day because, having experienced the impact of unfair judgement on my own skin, I don't want anyone else go through that, and so I remind myself of this anytime I commission anything or handle open calls.

If it sounds like I'm trying to reduce hiring to simple guidelines for identifying good enough candidates, that's exactly what I'm doing. After all, who benefits from increasingly hostile and stringent hiring requirements? Certainly not the people looking for jobs, you know, those who'd actually be doing the work! Café and restaurant managers know this better than most. They know that if you want your workforce to do a taxing job for a wage that's close to the lowest a business can get away with, you can't realistically expect people to have an impeccable CV, to profess some sort of long-held ambition to work for Joe Schmuck Cupcakes, and to stay there until the end of times. Why should Cindy, Chief Customer Success Officer at WeMakeTonsaMooney, expect that?

4. The most rewarding relationships are with line managers who separate criticism from positive feedback

Fuck the feedback sandwich. There I said it. Stop criticising your staff while trying to hide it at the same time.

Performance management is set up to rate and rank employees and focus primarily on their weaknesses. But constant criticism makes it nearly impossible for a manager and employee to build a healthy relationship, especially when the criticism is ambiguous.

Sandwiched feedback erodes trust and does nothing in terms of enhancing performance, despite people thinking it does. This was proven by a meta-analysis of 607 feedback studies involving over 23,000 participants almost 30 years ago, and has been reiterated by employees innumerable times since.

I must admit I don't always react well to feedback. Depending on when and how it's delivered, I can get defensive or anxious. Nonetheless, these feelings are intensified when the criticism I get is mixed with praise in a way that feels insincere. I want straightforward feedback so I can address issues directly, and I want genuine praise when I've done a great job, separately. Great managers know how to play to their employees' strengths, and praise is a transformative tool in their leadership arsenal—let's not smear it with criticism.

Whew, I enjoyed writing that! Undoing the seams of the original piece and focusing its message without forgetting to capture the turmoil that originally led me to write it. I hope it resonated with you.

But now I'm curious, what has been your experience? Which unsuspecting job taught the most valuable lessons?

To reply, you can send me a message here or DM me on Substack